Saturday, March 03, 2012

New Captain

Since Davy Arnaud was traded to Montreal, the debate has gone on about who should replace him as captain of Sporting KC. From Roger Espinoza to Matt Besler to Kei Kamara to Jimmy Nielsen to Julio Cesar have all had their names brought up as potential captains for Sporting KC this season. Today on Twitter, Robb Heineman let the cat out of the bag on who the new captain would be, congratulating the White Puma, Jimmy Nielsen, on being selected.

Nielsen joins a list of former captains that include Arnaud, Jimmy Conrad, Diego Gutierrez, Chris Klein, Preki, Mo Johnston, and Tony Meola. The running joke about KC's captain has already been made a few times about Nielsen being gone in the next year or so. In the past the captaincy of Sporting KC has seemed to be a ticket out of town, as Gutierrez, Conrad, and Arnaud were all traded away while still the captain. Even vice-captains, Josh Wolff and Omar Bravo have left town shortly after that. Last year after the Arnaud trade it prompted Jimmy Conrad to post a joke on Twitter saying that all KC players were turning down the captaincy as it meant a trade was coming for them.

The joking aside, Nielsen, along with Cesar, are the most experienced players on the team. Naming the White Puma captain is a little surprising though, as Peter Vermes has said occasionally that he likes a field player to be captain. And that's understandable, a goalkeeper is confined to a small area of the field for the most part, a field player has more free reign and is more involved in the play as a whole. But Vermes in the end decided to go with Nielsen over Besler, who many fans seemed to want the captaincy given to.